Mercy, Mercy
by emote rellish
Summary: They insist he's changed. Hermione insists he's still the same. When Hermione's friendships begin deteriorating, her mind begins deteriorating as well, and perhaps Draco is the only one that can save her.
1. providence

Disclaimer- I do not own Harry Potter© or any of the concepts derived from the book series. The book series is the soul property of J.K. Rowling.

* * *

**Mercy, Mercy**

Part One

(embracing the first shard of irony)

At Harry's wedding, when Harry practically serenaded Ron—_you've always been there man, I wouldn't know what I would've done without you—_then turned to Hermione with that familiar worn-out smile and said simply—_you've been a great pal_—she very coolly smiled back and said nothing, succumbing to the weight of that misleadingly soothing nothing that _everything happens for a reason. _

* * *

**providence**

The conference room was deceptively smaller from the inside.

Had Hermione not been embarrassingly tucked away in the back corner, the place most frequented by those with aversions to things like _punctuality_, she might not have noticed this.

She also might not have noticed, in all her struggles to distract herself from staring at the clammy backside wobbling in front of her, the peculiarly troubling seating arrangement in the second row.

Unfortunately, these things happen for a reason.

These tiresomely punctual, seat-mucking-up things just happen for a reason.

And because it appeared that these _things_ were out of her control, Hermione accepted with some mild discomfort the fact that Draco Malfoy was sitting beside Ron and Harry in a chair that had once been exclusively reserved for her. Hermione Granger. The _girl_ one. The _clever_ one.

It was not without an extremely legitimate albeit maddening reason that she had stumbled into Shacklebolt's meeting a catastrophic five minutes late. It was all Morgan Lowe's fault, _the_ brown wild-haired Morgan with the black-rimmed glasses and perfect teeth, _the_ Morgan who was otherwise known as the Head of the International Magical Council of Law (if you were actually interested in that kind of thing)—_the_ Morgan who had come under the impression that he had misplaced Puerto Rico's proposal to ban tourists from apparating onto San Juan's beaches seconds prior to Percy's meeting with the Puerto Rican representatives.

In actuality, Morgan had never misplaced them at all. But if Morgan and Hermione had known that, they wouldn't have shredded Morgan's Priscilla curtains into fabric confetti in their desperation to find it. One can only scream _accio Puerto Rican apparation proposal_ so many times before going insane. If Percy hadn't traipsed through to thank Morgan for dropping off the proposal on his desk the night before, Morgan's roll-y leather chair would have been torn apart.

Thus Morgan, who should have entered the conference room huffing and puffing alongside Hermione, was instead cleaning up the vestiges of his office while Hermione listened to Shacklebolt babble about the Annual Ministry Solidity Retreat.

The Annual Ministry Solidity Retreat was a fairly new occurrence in the Ministry. It brought together a select few employees from each department to discuss institutional stability in light of the Ministry's reformation. It was, if anything, intended to be a panacea for Magical London's fears and woes about a Ministry of Magic that had proven itself vulnerable to corruption in the past.

Harry and Shacklebolt had collaborated on developing the retreat with the Ministry for years following the Ministry's tumultuous demise under Thicknesse, and for the past three years since its inception, the retreats had proved extremely beneficial to the bolstering of public sentiments towards the Ministry.

The Ministry considered the retreats an entirely necessary addition to their agenda.

Hermione considered the retreats a joke. Throwbacks to the team-building camps of Muggle convention. Not that she'd ever been to either a retreat or a Muggle camp. She didn't really know anything about how the retreat functioned. This would be her first year going.

Regardless of how stupid she thought they seemed, the retreats had been Harry's idea, and Harry's ideas always tended to garner a certain amount of attention and success because nearly ten years after the war, people still felt obligated to support the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice. It was people like Harry, or so people like Hermione assumed, that had thrown down their robes over the muck for people to walk across. For _all _types of people to walk across.

She was speaking in particular about Draco, of course.

As Head of the Auror Office, Harry had practically handed Draco the promotion to Head of the Improper Use of Magic Office. No one aspired to be the hand or foot of the organization that prevented the conjuring of the nonexistent (food into pantries, money into bank accounts, inches onto the body, so on and so forth), but the promotion was certainly a monumental accomplishment for a man who had taken part in the plot to raze the Ministry, Hogwarts and any fledgling piece of evidence that Voldemort had been anything but the greatest wizard of all time. Ever.

She didn't care that Narcissa had saved Harry's life during the War. Draco would always be a narcissistic, misogynistic assface to her. When she'd received that little lavender airplane addressed from Harry and Ron, declaring that Draco had received the promotion, Hermione had nearly torn up the new broom handle regulations from the Trading Standards Body that she'd been working on for days. The boys even had the gall to ask her out for drinks to celebrate. Since she'd canceled on them for the last four drinks, it didn't matter to them whether or not she had to uncomfortably sit at a bar with Draco and discuss politics between shots—so long as they got to see her.

She dismissed the invitation without sending back a response, so when Harry and Ron showed up at her office door not knowing any better, she turned them away with a shake of her head.

Perhaps she should have taken those lightly disguised warnings a little more seriously because despite all her musings on the fortitude of Harry's optimism, she was fairly certain she was becoming his only exception.

Since that night, she'd picked up the rather problematic habit of _marking_ over _measuring_, so much so that she remembered events solely by their relativity to one another rather than by their proximity to these grand concepts like, oh, time.

At some point in between Draco's promotion and well, _now_, Harry had gotten married, Hermione had been promoted (though it was nothing too thrilling to boast about because although she was now working directly under the Head of her department, the Head was Percy Weasley of all antagonistic cynical wizards) and in the most tragically preventable of events, her relationships with Hogwarts friends had become saturated in gray.

That last event was not so much an event as it was a realization that she had made seconds ago after walking into the room and seeing Draco in her seat.

Looking at the three of them in a row made her recoil. Surely, Harry must have yielded to his sympathies and given the seat to Draco out of charity, for if Harry and Ron had willingly and unthinkingly just _let_ Draco sit there without feeling any inkling of guilt, Hermione would be bothered to say the least. Yet, hiding somewhere in the clusters of neurons was her acknowledgement of this fact. Too much time had passed. Her boys had left her behind.

There were times when she theologically permitted the stirring of the spectrum of good and evil, particularly when working in the Department of International Magical Cooperation as it was in politics' nature to compromise some good in lieu of some bad, but having to witness Harry and Ron treating Draco like some sort of… _human being_ was visually repulsive.

But what could she do but stand in her corner and watch them with her brow knit in anger and her fingers crinkling her papers? She had let Fate handle these relationships, as she assumed Fate had been doing all these years, and if Fate had determined it was time for a change, then so be it. Hermione was not one to give up so easily, but put up against things like _providence_, she felt helpless. Perhaps she could have tried harder to meet them halfway and perhaps she could have let go of her inhibitions and celebrated Draco's promotion with them—but she had already made her choice. She repeated to herself—everything happens for a reason.

The conference was suddenly over.

Shacklebolt was talking to Harry and Ron at the front of the room, while Draco dawdled about in his seat. Her seat.

Impatiently, she squeezed her way past the sweaty fat man in front of her and quickly made her way down the aisle towards Draco, her arms bumping over chairs in her haste to stake claim on her property. It was just a fucking chair, but she didn't want his hands all over it. She didn't want his jacket draped over it. She didn't want to see him or his shit anywhere near it.

But by the time she finally managed to navigate her way over to Draco, Ron and Harry had returned from their conversation with Shacklebolt. Draco was unashamedly staring at her, while Ron and Harry's mouths hung slightly agape.

She wished that now, more than ever, she'd done a better job of keeping track of time. In all her mishandling of the space-time continuum, she had failed to recognize that several months, not weeks, had passed since she'd last spoken to them. This realization destroyed her confidence.

Draco was the first to acknowledge her presence.

"Granger," he curtly nodded, gray eyes shifting immediately towards the ground. He appeared humbled by her arrival, that curiously angular face of his turning away from her in what she would normally had deemed timidity—but this was Draco Malfoy, and the near-convincing display of apprehension was undoubtedly another part of his bogus plan to look _normal_. Hermione brushed off the greeting. She wasn't stupid enough to fall for that shit.

"Hermione," Harry finally managed. _Hermione_ sounded far less convincing than _'Mione_, but she continued to smile that sickeningly sweet smile.

"Harry, Ron," she returned. Ron, in the most jarring of gestures, simply waved at her with a flicker of his fingers. Had their relationship really fallen this far?

Draco cleared his throat.

"Ah—I'll be outside," he directed at Harry and Ron. With a final drifting glance in Hermione's direction, he turned around and ambled out of the room with the other few straggling Ministry employees.

When the room finally emptied, save for the three of them, Hermione turned towards Harry.

"Malfoy. Really?" she asked, brow knit in skepticism.

"He's alright, Hermione," Ron said with a shrug.

She scoffed. Malfoy—alright? Men like Draco took entire lifetimes to correct themselves. "Alright" was unnecessarily considerate of Ron.

"Since when have _we_ been on such good terms with Malfoy?" she muttered. After it spilled from her mouth, she regretted it. There was no such thing as her _we_ anymore, judging from Ron's look of disbelief.

"I don't know if you remember Hermione, but _we_—" Ron nodded his head only in Harry's direction,"—have been working with Malfoy for about five months now."

Hermione shook her head, half in embarrassment, half in apology.

"Right—right… sorry, I just can't seem to keep track of time anymore."

Now it was Ron's turn to scoff.

"What have you boys been up to?" Hermione nervously tried to change the subject.

"A lot," Ron bluntly replied before Harry could get in a word.

Harry shook his head in disapproval of Ron's candidness as he looked down at his feet, which seemed to provoke Ron even further.

"What?" he barked, "So we're just going to pretend that this _isn't_ uncomfortable for all of us?"

Though Hermione had determined, days ago, that this encounter would be problematic, she had pushed the realization to the back of her head and feigned ignorance. Now the truth in its startling brilliance had been thrown at her with devastating accuracy.

Still she pretended not to know what Ron was talking about because acknowledging that it was fact would mean that she'd known it was happening all along but had done nothing to stop it. Which was exactly what she had done. But she didn't want to appear that fickle.

"What are you talking about, Ron?" she bit back. Then turned to look at Harry for some final indication, some final fragment of hope.

"Oh come on Hermione! The last time we talked in person was months ago—don't tell me you didn't realize that?" Ron continued to berate.

"I've been busy!" was the only response she could muster. Then hoping to ease the tension, she added, "But we'll be able to talk loads at the retreat, right?"

Harry's face scrunched up.

"The retreat—that's what we came to talk to Shacklebolt about," he said.

Her breath caught in her throat.

"We've been begging you to come see us for months, Hermione…" Harry began, trying to spin some ornate explanation for whatever painful blow he was about to deliver. Ron, quick-tempered and impatient Ron, cut Harry off, stepping in front of Harry and closer to Hermione.

"You missed my birthday… you missed Harry's birthday…" he began, counting off on his fingers as he flailed them wildly in her face, "… And you nearly missed Harry and Ginny's wedding. You've missed _everything_, Hermione."

She had to bite down on her tongue to keep from lashing out at Ron. When he put it that way, of course it sounded awful. But she couldn't have just up and left from her office with proposals and treaties to pass just to knock back a firewhiskey and gorge herself on cake. She had worked damn hard to carve out a career for herself. _By herself_. She wasn't Draco Malfoy. She couldn't ring up Harry to pull her out of a rut if she'd gone out and gotten sloshed the night before. She had too much self-respect to do that.

There were so many bitter things on the tip of her tongue, so many acid-laced insults she wanted to spit in Ron's face. Still, some part of her clung to the remains of their friendship, hoping it would buoy itself up.

Before she could compose a decent response, Harry let out a heavy sigh and with his head turned down said, "We're not going."

Hermione would have been lying if she'd said she hadn't expected this. If anything, she was surprised they hadn't waited longer to tell her. Regardless—it still hurt to hear Harry, of all people, tell her that they had stranded her even though she'd already known she'd been alone for quite some time now. Her jaw dropped.

"I thought we agreed we'd do this together," she pressed, "The only reason I agreed to go on this ridiculous retreat was because I thought we were doing this _together_."

Harry shook his head.

"We thought we were doing this together too, Hermione, but you haven't even _tried_ to make time for us these past few months. You're going because Percy asked you to, not because we did."

And without missing a beat, Ron shook his head in disappointment, "God forbid you disappoint someone other than you best friends."

Hermione could feel her eyes glazing over. This was simply unfair. She hated feeling outnumbered, especially feeling outnumbered by two people that she'd thought of as family. Had she been too presumptuous to think that they could simply slip back into the roles they'd been playing for the past twenty-some years after a five-month lull?

"That's completely unnecessary, Ron!" she found the nerve to shout, "You know I didn't do any of this on purpose!"

"What? We're supposed to feel better that you forgot about us _on accident_?" he hissed.

Hermione nursed her forehead in her hand. "Of course not! I would never _forget_ about you!"

At that moment, Harry pushed Ron out of the way and interjected, "But you did, Hermione, you did!"

Hermione never took Ron's words seriously, but Harry's—she could always depend on Harry for a dose of honesty. And if what he'd said in that heartbreakingly pitchy tone was any indication of the truth, she had nothing to defend herself with anymore. They had seen her cry plenty of times, but that had been back when she could depend on them to comfort her. Her greatest fear now was that they wouldn't even bother.

"So that's the way this is going to be," she struggled to say, "You two are just going to ignore me for the rest of your lives?"

"Oh—so now _you're_ upset about us ignoring you, but should you ignore us…" Ron rolled his eyes.

"I wasn't ignoring you! I told you—I've been busy…"

"Hermione, we've been working too, making sure your department doesn't get blown up at every International Magical Conference you have so you can do your fucking job—_you're welcome, _by the way—"

"Sod off, Ron! You'd be riding around on a mop carrying your passport with you to go to the fucking grocer's if it weren't for the shit I have to negotiate—"

And perhaps because he had come to the disturbing realization that this _actually_ could be the end, that he didn't want to completely lose Hermione despite what Ron was nonsensically shouting, Harry waved at Ron to stop talking and turned to look at Hermione.

"We weren't ignoring you, Hermione," he explained, "we're not planning on ignoring you either."

He paused for a moment to gauge Hermione's reaction—she had only stopped talking because Ron had finally shut up.

"We can't make your decisions for you," he continued, "So if your career is more important, then fine, we can't stop you from working, but we're not going to go on this retreat with you just so you can feel better about not having spent time with us these past months. When you come back, either owl us, or don't."

Hermione had calmed down drastically. Arguing with Ron always set her off, but Harry could always bring her back down. He had certainly been blunt, but Hermione needed some brutal honesty every now and then.

"You're really not going to the retreat then?" she asked.

Harry shook his head, always the tastefully cool one, "We're not, but try to have fun, Hermione."

Ron however, annoyed that he'd had to keep his mouth closed for so long with so much hot air building up in his head, leapt forward with one final jibe.

"And it's not like you'll miss us any ways."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut in what could only have been frustration as Ron folded his arms across his chest with that ridiculously arrogant smile. She wanted to smack Ron across the face. She wanted to hurt him enough that he would never be able to talk again. But instead, she swallowed her anger and turned around without so much as a good-bye, for if she'd opened her mouth, something heinous would have spilled out.

She was also afraid that she would start crying. This was not at all what she had expected when she had walked into the conference room an hour ago.

She quickly walked out of the room, clumsily knocking over chairs in her haste to leave before that overwhelming sense of loneliness swept over her. She could feel it start to roll down her cheeks in little wet hot beads.

She shouldn't have been as upset as she was because she'd seen this coming, but she couldn't avoid feeling helpless. A part of her had always been so tangled up in Ron and Harry that when they'd pulled away, it'd left with them, leaving a gaping wound for all sorts of miserable sentiments to fester in. Somewhere behind her, she heard Ron or Harry call her name, but she burst out of the conference room door and slammed it shut behind her.

They were supposed to be _the_ Golden Trio. What were they now?

Complete shambles.

"Tissue?"

She jerked her head to the side, her heart nearly bursting out of her chest in shock.

"Tissue?" Draco asked again, taking a step away from the wall he had apparently been leaning against this entire time.

Of all pieces of shit to have to deal with right now… She didn't have time for this. She would _never_ have time for this. She sneered and shook her head in disgust. Too many emotions were running through her head right now.

Why was he looking at her? She would have slapped him were she any less professional. Her expression must have conveyed her revulsion because he balled the tissue up in his hand and threw it in a nearby wastebasket.

"A simple no would have sufficed, Granger," he said coolly.

She scoffed. He was actually talking to her. Like they did that sort of thing.

"Get away from me," she warned with her eyes narrowed.

"Merlin, I was just offering you a tissue," he replied, "I take it things with Potter and Weasley didn't go so well?"

If Harry and Ron hadn't walked out of the door at that very moment, Hermione would have thrown herself at Malfoy and ripped the weirdly blonde hair from his head. The gall of Draco, to think that he had any sort of precedence in her life, to think that she would ever degrade herself by talking to him. God—even for him to think that he had any precedence in Harry or Ron's life infuriated her.

She icily stared him down. She could hear Harry calling her name again, but her body was bursting with so many different emotions that she didn't want to speak. A string of profanities would just come flooding out.

Instead, she turned and walked down the hall to the elevator, her body shaking with anger as the boys called for her to come back.

xXx

* * *

This was not what Hermione had expected. This was _far_ from what she had expected.

Where were the log cabins? The bonfires? The wildlife? The overwhelming scent of _nature_ that flooded the nostrils and practically hummed with vivacity?

She could feel her stomach churning.

Why the fuck was she standing in front of Malfoy Manor?

She had seen it before in photographs, but this was one of those instances where it was far larger than it appeared in pictures. This _thing_ was a granite Italian-villa-inspired monstrosity. She had never before been more humbled by a piece of architecture.

Morgan, clearly sensing her discomfort, nudged her in the side.

"Should you or should I?" he said, gesturing towards the large glass and wood front doors.

Hermione croaked in response. She should have paid more attention to Shacklebolt's briefing—particularly to the part where he had expressed that the retreat would be held at Malfoy Manor this year. Had she known this, she most likely would not have come, regardless of the fact that Percy had hand-picked and assigned her and Morgan to prepare the presentation for their department.

This was just asking too much of her.

It had been a week since she had seen Harry, Ron or Draco, a week since she had nearly pummeled Draco for being so brash as to think she would ever talk to him. Now, she would have no choice but to talk to him for the next six days. To eat with him. To discuss politics with him. Six entire fucking days. She was going to go mental.

As Morgan took the front steps two at a time, Hermione idled on the drive, hoping to spare herself the moment of having to look Draco in the eyes and thank him for his hospitality.

She hadn't spoken to Ron or Harry since the falling out. Instead, she had drowned herself in work, had stayed up for nights preparing the presentation with Morgan and had essentially left the Ministry as little as possible. The less leisure time she had, the less time she had to think about her deteriorating friendships. It was in her nature to hand the very few issues she could not deal with or control to Fate.

"Hermione!" she heard Morgan shout from the front doors.

He was waving her to come in. Apparently, Draco wasn't personally greeting his guests. The manor's doors had opened of their own resolve and were slowly closing in some pathetic attempt at appearing foreboding because God forbid someone try to use the handles to yank them open.

She quickly climbed up the steps, then took Morgan's hand and was pulled into the greeting hall before the doors slammed shut behind them with a resounding thud.

"Interesting welcome," she sarcastically drawled, setting her bags down on the floor.

The inside of the manor was surprisingly bright. Two grand staircases ran up along either side of the room. Large open rooms extended off of the hall, and directly across from the front doors, they could see into the candlelit courtyard. She could hear music wafting in through the open windows and hear the voices of other Ministry officials that had already arrived.

"Granger, Lowe."

Hermione turned in time to see Draco walking in from one of the side rooms. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his khaki pants and the sleeves of his white linen shirt were rolled up to his elbows. His expression was characteristically nonchalant. Her brow knit in scrutiny, but she still managed a fairly courteous, "Malfoy."

Morgan smiled and immediately grabbed Draco's hand with both of his own and shook, "How are you doing, Draco?"

"Good," he said with a nod. His gaze was awkwardly concentrated on Hermione. "I'm glad to see you two have made it here safely."

She was able to stop herself from scoffing by biting her tongue. Of course they'd made it here safely, the idiot. It wasn't as though they'd needed to take an excruciatingly difficult mountain biking expedition to get here. They'd apparated straight from the Ministry.

"Let me show you to your rooms so you can get settled in and join us in the courtyard," Draco continued. He reached for Hermione's suitcase, but she quickly pulled it away from him.

"I'm fine," she said, rather, warned. He smirked, shook his head, then turned towards Morgan, giving him a hefty pat on the back.

"How's Peru's case against the Vipertooth smuggling coming along?" he asked.

Clearly pleased that _anybody_ was paying attention to the workings of the International Magical Council of Law, Morgan animatedly began to describe his work, ignoring the looks of disdain Hermione threw at him.

Watching Draco's reactions to Morgan's discussion of his work, Hermione was almost convinced that Draco was legitimately concerned about the Peruvian Vipertooths. She tried to distract herself from their conversation by looking at the pictures hung up on the walls. She had expected to see the faces of pureblood wizards and witches leering out at her, but all she had seen so far were landscapes, abstract works and the occasional geometric shape masquerading as modern art. It was all so eerily unlike the Draco she remembered from Hogwarts. This was not Draco at all.

"Here you are," Draco cleared his throat.

Apparently she had been so immersed in her observations that she hadn't realized that Draco had already dropped Morgan off at his room. The two of them were standing alone in the hallway. He pulled a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door, pushing it open for her.

From the doorway, she could see a beautiful canopy bed with light blue silk sheets and translucent blue curtains. Beside the bed was a nightstand with a lamp and a complementary bottle of wine. She apprehensively took a step inside and was amazed to find that the further she went in, the larger the room appeared. There was space for a vanity, a wardrobe and an armchair, all consistent with the light blue theme and as ornately decorated as the wooden bed frame. Against the back wall, there were two French doors leading out to a balcony that overlooked the courtyard. The doors had been left slightly ajar and sounds of laughter and conversation floated in.

She contained her gasp of surprise, realizing that Draco was still standing beside her, staring.

"I hope it's to your liking," he said quietly, dropping her suitcase down. She hadn't even realized she'd left it outside, and it annoyed her that he'd picked it up.

"You know, you could have just left it, I would have gotten it," she said, not even bothering to tell him that yes, the room was to her liking. She didn't care that the room was beyond anything she could have imagined. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of thinking that he had earned her approval.

"No really, I insist," he smirked.

She let her purse slide down her arm and onto the floor so that she could prop her arms on her waist.

"What do you keep finding so amusing?" she asked.

He didn't respond at first. He sort of half-narrowed his eyes in scrutiny, all the while smirking that ridiculous smirk.

"You're very self-righteous," he finally replied.

Her immediate reaction was to scoff. Her? Self-righteous? Of all people to make an accusation like that…

"Isn't that a little hypocritical of you?" she fired back.

He shrugged, then tossed her the key ring which she lithely caught.

"Then I suppose we have something in common," he said with a smile before turning around and closing the door behind him.

Hermione threw the keys onto the bed in anger, wishing she had the courage to set the room on fire just so Draco wouldn't have the satisfaction of knowing she would be getting any pleasure out of her stay here. She hated the way he thought he was so _clever_ and _charming_. Oh, like self-righteousness was something that people pined for. He'd completely evaded her question.

She just needed to get through the next six days and then she would be able to return to the Ministry, owl Harry and Ron for a drink and return to her regular daily routine. Merlin, she could even leave earlier than that if she needed to. Their presentation was on the fourth day, Draco's presentation was on the fifth, and the celebratory gala for all Ministry officials was on the sixth. She could leave within the next four days if she wanted to. The weight on her chest lifted.

On the bright side, she had access to running water and air conditioning—these had been two of her largest concerns back when she'd thought the retreat was being held in log cabins in the woods. No matter how much disgust she expressed for Malfoy Manor, it was several hundred tiers above any inn, motel or bed and breakfast that the Ministry could have afforded for this many officials.

It was undeniably beautiful.

xXx

* * *

Despite Morgan's heckling, Hermione declined the invitation to go to the courtyard. According to the itinerary, Draco would be regularly hosting dinner in the courtyard, so tonight was no particular exception and if she wanted to take her time unpacking in her room and thereby cleanly avoid Draco for one more night, she could. Albeit she was still slightly disappointed because the courtyard, from her balcony above, appeared to be the centerpiece of the Manor which was saying quite a lot considering the walls of this place absolutely _leaked_ with money.

The courtyard stretched down the center of the home in a cross shape. The four-man orchestra played in one of the juts and across the way, a bartender mixed drinks in the other. At the end of the courtyard, there was sundial hemmed in by square hedges and beyond it, there was an archway through the manor to what looked to be the opulent gardens Narcissa had won fame for before her death. The courtyard was lit with a mixture of floating candles and strings of light. In the direct center, there was a small rectangular pool lit up by glowing lotus flowers that floated along the surface like little tugboats.

She would have gone down—she was _dying_ to go down—but seeing Draco walking about the courtyard made the bile churn in her stomach. So instead, she flitted about her room, investigating the nooks and crannies, interrogating the subjects in portraits to determine their bloodlines and political affinities.

It was a tragically lame evening for Hermione.

To pass the time, she took a quick shower. At least, she had been determined to take a quick shower, but upon stepping into the bathroom she shared with Morgan and seeing the white antique bathtub with the brass handles… she couldn't keep herself from slipping in.

So Morgan found her this way, with her eyes closed and her body submerged in fragrant bubbles, softly snoring.

She woke up to the sound of his laughter.

"Is this where you've been hiding out this entire time, Hermione?" he asked, propping himself up against the sink.

Hermione wiped her face off with a nearby towel, then stretched her soapy arms up above her head and yawned. She hadn't really thought about it before, but aside from Harry and Ron, Morgan was one of her closest friends. Perhaps even closer than Ron and Harry because all the time she _hadn't_ spent with her boys, she'd spent with Morgan instead. In a strictly professional setting, of course.

She had never really asked Morgan questions about his personal life, but he had never mentioned a significant other, never worn a wedding band on his finger in all the years she'd known him, and every once in a blue moon, would bring up knee-slapping stories of awful dates his mother had set him up on. She took all of this to mean that he was a bachelor. At thirty years old though, with his straight teeth, unkempt brown hair and boyish charm, she wondered why.

Morgan took off his glasses and proceeded to wipe them clean on his shirt.

"You know, people were asking about you downstairs," he said, raising his brow.

"Really? Who?" she asked.

"Just some chums from Magical Transportation," he replied as he held his glasses up to the light for inspection.

Hermione nodded into the bubbly froth around her.

"Oh, and that bloke, Draco," he said very casually as he put his glasses back on. Hermione sat up straight in the bathtub, the water swaying around her.

"What?"

Morgan pushed himself off of the sink and came to sit down on the rim of the bathtub.

"I lied about Draco—but you're not doing a particularly good job of hiding your loathing of him. What exactly do you have against him?"

She flicked some soapy water at Morgan in objection, then settled back into the tub and looked up at the ceiling. Had it really been that obvious that she didn't like the man?

"What gave me away?"

He laughed and dipped his hand into the water, splashing her back.

"Don't think I didn't see you gagging behind us when we were walking to our rooms," he said.

She sighed, then picked up her wand from the floor and waved a towel over so that it hung like a curtain between her and Morgan. He turned his head away as she stood up out of the water and wrapped herself up.

"I just don't get it," she said as she climbed out of the tub, "Does nobody remember the kind of person he was? Does nobody remember what his family did? What he did?"

"It's been years since the war, Hermione. A lot can change in a decade," Morgan shrugged.

"Not Draco—I don't trust a freakishly blonde hair on that malformed head of is."

In truth, it wasn't malformed at all, and his hair wasn't very freakishly blonde either now, but Hermione was apt to ignore these facts when angry.

"You'd be surprised. He's worked hard. Really hard," Morgan stood up, resting his hands in the pockets of his field shorts.

Hermione rolled her eyes. Like she hadn't heard that before.

"I'll see you in the morning for breakfast," he said, putting one hand on her shoulder, "Stop thinking and try to have _fun _Hermione. He's not a bad guy. I swear."

Then he turned around and walked out the door back into his room, shutting it gently behind him. She sighed and slipped into the blue cotton bathrobe she'd brought from home. Sickeningly enough, it matched the room décor. She wondered if this had been intentional on Draco's part—but it was too farfetched a notion because Ministry files didn't exactly carry information on things like favorite colors and foods.

She padded back into her room and was slightly disappointed that she could no longer hear the orchestra music wafting in through the French doors. It was late though, past midnight, and they all had to be at breakfast at eight the next morning.

The bottle of wine was still sitting on her nightstand, untouched. Taking Morgan's advice, she finally relented and uncorked the bottle, pouring herself a glass. She set the bottle back down, then took the glass outside onto the balcony.

The courtyard was still lit up, but everyone had left, including the musicians and the bartender. The lotus flowers were the most hypnotic of all the sights in the courtyard at this hour, still glowing and lazily floating across the water with no particular direction. She leaned over the railing and stared down at them.

This was disturbing. The Ministry was eating his food, the Ministry was living in his house. Since she had handed her _life_ to this organization, did that put her under the obligation of enjoying his company? She swirled the wine in her glass, then took a long drink.

Morgan was an excellent judge of character. Yet, he had never met Draco at Hogwarts. He had never been on the other end of an insult or an attack. He had never experienced the boiling hatred Hermione had for Draco. She simply could not believe that he had changed, regardless of what Morgan had insisted.

She stood up to stretch her arms across her head, quickly glancing at the balcony across the courtyard. She immediately regretted it.

Draco was languidly leaning against the railing, nursing a glass in his hand and staring at her. Had he been there the whole time, just watching her? She waited for the profanities to come bubbling out of her mouth, but instead of feeling revulsion or violation, she felt strangely _impatient_. She couldn't quite explain it.

He was still wearing the white shirt and khaki pants that he'd greeted her in and was still looking fascinatingly normal. Though the balconies were dimly lit, she could make out the features of his face, the structure of his body. She'd never allowed herself to look at him before, to really _look_ at him. And now that she was, she realized that he had grown up into an attractive... she jerked her head away, staring down into her wine.

She wanted to throw her glass at him for not having announced his presence earlier, but knowing her lack of accuracy, she would undoubtedly have launched the wineglass at an entirely different balcony altogether.

She waited for him to say something. To break this awkward tension that she couldn't describe. Rather, she _refused_ to describe it, concerned it was shaping into something else.

He suddenly pushed away from the railing and very casually and very coolly, lifted his wine glass to her.

"To self-righteousness," he toasted from his side of the courtyard, smirking.

He then turned and walked back into his room, leaving Hermione speechless and alone on the balcony.

* * *

Author's Note:

I've returned with another D/Hr piece, and geez, this took an effing long time to write. I've taken this story down a few comedy notches from This and Here, but hopefully it still sparks a laugh every now and then. It will probably be at the least, three parts, at the most, five. There are a lot of unanswered questions floating around, but hopefully they'll all get answered by the end of the fic. Read and review, let me know what you think, and enjoy!

* * *


	2. conversion

Disclaimer- I do not own Harry Potter© or any of the concepts derived from the book series. The book series is the soul property of J.K. Rowling.

* * *

**Mercy, Mercy**

Part Two

(embracing the second shard of irony)

For Christmas, Hermione spent two months finagling two limited edition Nimbus 2050s from the Department of Magical Transportation (before their international scheduled release, mind you) for Harry and Ron.

Harry and Ron spent two days filling out paperwork to grant Hermione security clearance to the Ministry's private archives.

Hermione had had clearance for the past two years.

But she thanked her boys any ways and told them she went everyday.

* * *

**conversion**

Hermione dreamt of godly apparitions storming across the balcony that night.

But when she stumbled gracelessly out of the bed and lurched for the balcony, the locked French doors reverberated against her and she staggered backwards over the moonlight that had spilled across the ivory carpet. She woke up in the morning for breakfast with her body splayed ragdoll-like across the blue armchair, wondering where the time had gone.

The rest of the morning carried along quickly. Despite being in Wiltshire at the end of August, there was a remarkable chill about the manor that boded well for Hermione's hair as humidity often turned it into a tumbly and weedy sort of mess. She had just finished straightening it when she heard Morgan jiggle the door handle, call her name, then burst in.

"Good morning," he greeted as he slid into the bathroom, "I thought I would find you in here."

"Just a few more minutes," she replied, not bothering to look at him as she unsuccessfully tried pinning her hair back. Though breakfast had started ten minutes ago, she had spent every one of those ten minutes determining whether to wear her hair half pinned back, or fully pinned back. This decision was of course, absolutely _not_ imperative. Normally, she would have cringed at the prospect of being late to a Ministry meeting, but the itinerary had tagged breakfast as "casual", and as this was a retreat, Hermione had taken the liberty of assuming that the expectations for things such as punctuality and attendance were much more lenient.

In actuality, these were all very _awful_ excuses for the real reason Hermione was stifling her _proclivity_ for punctuality—that reason being her strong abhorrence for (or fear of?) that waxen-eyed ghost that had spent the night slipping in and out of her head.

She decided to forego the clip altogether, succumbing to Morgan's impatient foot-tapping warning. Sensing her submission, Morgan tugged her out of the bathroom by the sleeve of her sweater and into the hallway. Already, they could hear laughter floating up from the dining room.

"How was your night?" Morgan asked as he pulled her by the hand towards the grand staircase.

Hermione didn't have the energy to elaborate on her dreams, or the energy to _try_ to remember them for that matter. She bit out a, "Fine," and concerned herself with the crinkled receipts buried in her clutch.

As they descended the steps, a sharp peal of laughter broke their conversation. Morgan, clearly disgruntled that he had to forego any sort of Ministry-relevant joke or short story, pulled her along so roughly that she began jogging to keep up. He skidded to a halt inches away from the archway entrance to the dining room, but Hermione had no intention of stopping so the two stumbled breathlessly into the room much to Hermione's chagrin.

Hardly a head turned at the sound of their arrival. _Hardly._

It would have been too easy for Hermione and Morgan to slide into their seats and into the conversation without the least bit of friction. From the way things had been going, from the way she'd been wrangled into these awkward interactions with him, Hermione had surrendered to the notion that her life at Malfoy Manor would proceed under Draco's monitor. Thus, though it filled her head with spinning and tumbling and wildly nauseating pains, she was not at all surprised when she looked up from the table, from the only seat that had been open upon her late arrival, and observed Draco, with his fingers all steepled and his lips drawn in a tight line, staring at her. She grimaced. He smirked. This was all getting so wildly redundant.

It did not help the mood when in all his carelessness, Morgan wrapped his hand about hers, mistaking her silence for some sort of nausea.

"Are you feeling alright?" he whispered with his mouth by her ear in the concerned manner that close friends often take upon themselves when caring for their sickly counterparts. The problem was that Hermione was neither sick nor very appreciative of his hand tangled about hers like bed sheets, and though she rolled her eyes and nodded at Morgan in that sarcastic way of hers, she could tell Draco had already made several assumptions of his own.

When Morgan turned his head back towards the conversation, Hermione glanced at Draco. His smirk had been replaced by that firmly unexcitable line again. She normally would have treated this moment with complete disregard, as Draco's happiness had never troubled her before, but again that feeling of _impatience_ rode down upon her back and she found herself looking to her plate for a distraction.

"Granger," Draco suddenly said, followed by an obtrusively _loud_ clearing of his throat, "if you don't mind me asking, why couldn't Potter and Weasley join us for the retreat?"

Her fingers unconsciously wrapped around her butter knife as half of the dining table turned in unconcealed curiosity to hear Hermione's response. Just why was only one third of the Goldern Trio traipsing about Malfoy Manor without the mildest concern for her complements? Certainly, Draco already knew why they couldn't make it. He had been standing outside of the room like a little fucking idiot as nuclear war had waged inside with Ron's head threatening to pop off and Harry spouting off such awfully true facts that Hermione had been reduced to tears. And surely, even if he had not heard their conversation in the conference room, he had been working alongside them in the same department for the past week, and good God if they didn't talk about marathon battles such as these, then what the hell else did they piddle around talking about?

She swallowed her anger and released the butter knife.

"Ron wasn't feeling well and Harry had an urgent case to work on," she said, oh-so-matter-of-factly that a chorus of credulous 'oohs' and 'ahhs' rippled across the table.

Draco raised a brow and was about to press her further when—

"Ah yes, Potter—we better leave him to it then, because we all certainly remember the last time he had an _urgent_ case…" Morgan said, half jokingly half seriously.

Hermione wasn't sure if Morgan had sensed her discomfort and had thrown that remark in to save her, or was legitimately referencing something that she'd unfortunately had no recollection of ever happening. Still, despite her look of confusion, he nudged her as if she would complete his thought, as if they were some sort of odd couple with ESP.

"Oh come on, Hermione, don't you remember the Christmas Party at the Ministry? Harry popped in halfway during Shacklebolt's speech just to apologize for not being able to stay longer…"

She shrugged and looked at Morgan as though he was crazy. She vaguely remembered seeing Christmas trees lining the Ministry's atrium, strings of lights wrapped around columns, bubbling hot cider and punch, but she could not remember ever having seen Harry that night.

"I asked you to dance and you thought it would be brilliant to hide beneath the mistletoe…" he continued pressing.

By this point, the rest of the officials had returned to their other conversation, their loud dialogue nearly drowning out Morgan's words.

"I must have left early," Hermione finally said, not wanting to perpetuate their discussion any further, "Or you must have had too many drinks."

Morgan laughed and shook his head, then gently squeezed Hermione's arm.

"Whatever you say Hermione, whatever you say," he trailed off as he turned to join the rest of the guests.

Hermione turned to look down at her plate and began furiously racking her brain for any memory with the slightest resemblance to what Morgan had just described. Maybe she had been far more intoxicated than she'd remembered. But the problem was that she didn't even remember drinking that night. For the most part, she didn't remember the night at all. God, she must have been _really_ sloshed.

When she turned back up again, tired of looking at the scrambled eggs and toast swimming about her plate, she very expectedly and very obnoxiously found herself staring at Draco again with her anxieties reading all across her brow in that furrowed and wrinkled way. He stared back, eerily cool, eerily un-anything with his fingers still steepled in front of his face as if fearful that the smallest movement of his body would blow both of them away.

xXx

* * *

The Department of Magical Transportation's presentation at the business-lunch went smoothly, save for the first five minutes that passed in uncomfortable silence as the Magical Transportation representatives struggled to control the Nimbus 2050 prototype while it hurtled about the dining room. Having already experienced the brutality of the 2050's stiff bristle beatings, as Hermione'd had to wrap not one, but _two_ of them, in neon red and green wrapping paper the previous Christmas, Hermione took care to avoid engaging the Magical Transportation representatives in any thorny conversations. They had probably been through enough, forced to keep the 2050 in submission (as the new model had a sixth sense for _space_ and once shipped one hundred miles outside of London to the Wiltshire countryside, undoubtedly went ballistic boxed up inside) that they certainly didn't need any further reasons to regret having spent their time here.

Standing on her balcony with Morgan, splitting the rest of her wine before dinner, Hermione thought that she had finally found peace. But thinking and knowing are fairly different in nature, and thus it would have been dishonest of her to say that she _knew_ she'd found peace. Because she hadn't. Not in the least.

Technically, she'd been telling the truth when she'd said that lunch had gone smoothly. _So smoothly_ in fact, that she hadn't so much as received a glance from Draco, despite their close proximity across the table from one another and despite the _many_ brilliant and witty remarks she'd made after the presentation. Not for his satisfaction. No, absolutely _not_ for his satisfaction.

Yet, hours after lunch had finished, Hermione was still bothered that Draco had ignored her because prior to this lunch, he had seemed so keen on harassing her whenever their paths crossed.

This was perhaps not the best way to describe Draco's behavior because she was not the type of girl that took pleasure out of _harassment_ (as was the case with her sudden pangs of longing for his attention).

At first, she tried to tell herself that it was the lack of attention that bothered her, as it was natural for a girl to covet the occasional remark so long as it was an indication that someone _other _than herself was taking care to note her existence. Maybe Draco fulfilled that human desire to possess all those things that cannot be had.

Having had hours to mull over this strange feeling of absence in her gut, she began to realize that she hated Draco for many inane reasons. Reasons like his relationship with Harry and Ron, his family's poor treatment of house elves, and even for trivial outdated reasons like—that one time at Hogwarts when he'd told the Slytherin first-years that her name was "Hermaphrodite". Of course, that didn't change the fact that Draco had at one point in his life, pledged himself to Voldemort or the fact that he still had a scar on his arm as a souvenir from darker, more Death-Eater-y times. Perhaps she did not _hate_ him so much as she did not _trust _him.

And thus, this conundrum between _hate_ and _distrust_ had lead her here, to this point, to this particular question posed with the intention of unraveling other conundrums leading to other questions, and so on and so forth.

Swirling her wine about her glass, Hermione casually leaned back against the French doors and stared hard at Morgan.

"Do you remember at breakfast—when you mentioned Harry showing up at the Christmas party?" she asked.

Morgan pushed his glasses up his nose, raised his brow.

"Well, Harry didn't stay too long but yes, I remember. What about it?" he replied.

In her head, all these strangely shaped pieces she'd conjured up from fragmented memories fit together rather nicely. Though she was slow to remember certain Ministry events, a la the Christmas Party, she remembered quite vividly the twenty-four hour lockdown the Ministry underwent several months ago. It had been the first attempted security infiltration in years, which was perhaps why it resonated so prominently in her head. She remembered everything about that day, from the large bold black script on the red airplanes declaring the Ministry had been broken into, to the squeal the door had made when she'd magically sealed it shut.

Ministry officials on duty were required to seal themselves into their rooms, to place anti-apparation charms on their offices and to stay put until otherwise notified. Shortly after receiving this message, Percy had burst into her office with a flustered Morgan in tow, shouting something about a break-in and how he'd been forced to reschedule three meetings already. She offered up her office as a headquarters of sorts, knowing very well how Morgan and Percy were both very extroverted gregarious folk and would accomplish nothing if barred in their rooms alone. For twenty-four hours, the three of them played cards, ate the stale rations provided by the Ministry for these lockdown situations, and filed so much paperwork that for days following, they were at a lack of things to do.

When the lockdown passed, the door opened of its own volition and Morgan stumbled into the hallway shouting hallelujah until his throat went hoarse.

She had always wondered what had happened that day. And having been reminded (or told for the very first time, which ever you prefer) of Harry's absence at the Christmas Party just months before the lockdown, Hermione was apt to conclude that the two events were related, as they were both equally anomalous in nature. If anyone knew anything about the technical workings and confounding gears and pulleys of the Ministry, it was Morgan who took care of the Ministry's legal logistics.

"That was why we had the lockdown, wasn't it?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" he asked, coyly smiling and just reveling in the uncommon phenomenon in which he knew more than Hermione.

"Don't play dumb with me," she frowned, boxing him in the shoulder, "Harry was working on something important the night of the Christmas Party, wasn't he?"

Morgan scoffed, "Clearly."

"Stuff it, you _know_ what I mean," she groaned, "What happened during the lockdown? You _must_ know…"

"Oh, must I?" he burbled into his glass as he took a long drink. But catching sight of Hermione's furrowed brow, he sighed and rested his glass on the balcony's railing.

"This is confidential information, Hermione," he iterated.

"Morgan, you can trust me."

"I know that," he rolled his eyes, "Just a precaution so that when you go running to _The Daily Snitch_, I can tell Percy you seduced me, and that I didn't just _tell_ you like it was nothing."

He waggled his eyebrows, so Hermione boxed him in the shoulder again.

"Geez, all right She-Hulk, no need to get violent," Morgan chided, nursing his wounded arm. He took one more drink from his glass, emptying it, then set it down on the ground.

"I only know what I read from the incident report, and what little Draco was able to tell me from his hospital bed."

Hermione tilted her head, "His hospital bed?"

"Hermione—who is telling the story here?"

She quickly shut her mouth and busied herself with her wine glass.

"Even if he hadn't been paralyzed, I don't think he would have told me much different. He's very private about his personal affairs," Morgan continued.

Draco, paralyzed and in a hospital bed? Draco was the last person she would have thought to have been involved in a Ministry lockdown, as she had assumed that he'd maintained a spotless reputation all these years as compensation for his highly suspicious past dealings and such. When, in her brief deliberations of this event, she imagined what had happened on level two of the Ministry that day, she'd always pictured Harry as the sole opponent of whatever manifestation of dark magic had weaseled its way in. She had never bothered to ask Harry about it in their brief and sparse interactions over the months. In passing, it wasn't particularly the most appropriate topic to bring up. _Oh, by the way, I heard you got into some epic battle again that shut the Ministry down for a day. How was that?_

"We had incorrect intel about Adolphus Lestrange's whereabouts," Morgan explained, leaning against the railing, "In our records, we had him listed as deceased, you know, exploded to death or hit in the face with an Unforgivable. But those bastards just don't stay down. The night of the Christmas Party, the Law Enforcement Department got hit up, right when we were all upstairs drinking to prosperity and what not. Some files went missing and one of the cleaning staff said they saw Adolphus, so Harry stayed in the Department to keep an eye on things, do a little inventory and check what went missing."

He sighed and knelt down to pick up his glass and pour himself more wine.

"Whatever it was, it had to do with Draco because Adolphus broke into Draco's office a few months later and tortured him for hours. Draco never elaborated on how long he was under the Cruciatus Curse, but I guess you wouldn't really want to remember that kind of stuff…" he mulled over this for a moment before taking a drink, "Any ways, however many hours later, someone finally walked in on it and everything went to shit. The Ministry went into lockdown. People thought this was some neo-Death Eater movement. Whatever Adolphus wanted, only Draco and Shacklebolt know. Harry's probably got a clue, but he never said anything to me about it while I was working on Draco's case..."

Hermione poured the rest of the wine into her glass and turned to look across the courtyard at Draco's empty balcony. She would never have believed a story like this had anyone _but_ Morgan told it to her. Did a man as despicable as Draco deserve a punishment like that? Did she even find Draco despicable anymore after what Morgan had relayed to her? Clearly, she did not, if this tumbling, despairing, knotting sensation in her stomach was any indication of her sympathies.

"That's so… tragic," she finally said, turning back to look at Morgan, wishing that at times like these, she could at least _appear_ more articulate.

"I know—I felt pretty stupid after breakfast. I shouldn't have brought it up. Who knows what kinds of shitty things those memories must stir up," Morgan replied, "He spent a month recovering at St. Mungo's. I don't know how he stayed sane."

"Merlin, I had no idea he'd gone through all of that," she muttered.

"That's why I told you to give him a second chance. He's really not a bad guy, Hermione. Even after all that, he didn't want to push for the maximum sentence for Adolphus—the man's still alive and kicking in Azkaban."

Tendrils of suspicion began weaving their way through Hermione's head. The notion that Draco would show mercy towards his _uncle_ was not so farfetched. She had always been one to rely on her intuition, as it often proved correct, and despite the stories Morgan was telling her about Draco, there was still something _off_ about Draco's character. Maybe Draco and Adolphus were still in league with one another, maybe Adolphus had come to retrieve his debts.

Suddenly, she wasn't so sad for Draco anymore. But that didn't mean she was _happy_ about what had happened to him either.

"Draco's a good man, Hermione. I know you think he's trying to buy all these officials off, but he's not. He didn't offer up his house as some sort of luxury resort for us, you know," Morgan said with a shrug, "Shacklebolt asked Draco himself. I think the big boys up there just figured it would be safer to hold it somewhere familiar—no log cabins on muggle campsites. Draco's just being a good host."

Okay, she got the picture. It was one thing to defend a man, but another thing to sell him like some slutty man prostitute. Hermione scoffed, "Jesus Morgan, why don't you just fucking marry him already?"

Morgan laughed and patted Hermione on the back.

"Alright, alright, I can see that you're not impressed. Forget I said anything," he said, picking up the empty bottle and his empty glass, "Let's go get dinner. Then maybe you'll be able to see for yourself how excellent of a host he is…"

Hermione groaned and roughly brushed past him, storming off her balcony just as the curtains rippled across the courtyard.

xXx

* * *

The courtyard was already loud and crowded when Hermione and Morgan arrived for dinner. It seemed that hardly a minute went by in the Manor where guests weren't drinking or on their way to get a drink—which would explain the inexhaustible discussions composed of inebriated conversationalists shouting at one another while under the impression that they were whispering. She gestured towards the bar and Morgan waved her away, perfectly content with the beer he had somehow wheedled from the Head of Magical Transportation.

Weaving her way through the crowds, Hermione was dismayed to find Draco already sitting quietly at the bar, staring into the reflecting pool with his hands wrapped tightly around his drink. He looked so pitifully wretched in his argyle sweater and chino shorts, musing about nothing, staring off into space. After what Morgan had told her, she wondered if Draco had simply become one of those _broken_ people. Like Luna or Neville who after the war had lost their voracity for life and now hovered back and forth between St. Mungo's and the Ministry, looking for some sort of balance to get by on.

She wondered if he was thinking about it now. Thinking about the exact moment his body had given in after convulsing for hours as Adolphus screamed over and over in the background, _Crucio crucio crucio!_ until he was nothing but a shell of a man with waxen skin and hair.

After stewing in her reflections, after hearing all Morgan had to tell her, she came to the spontaneous conclusion that Draco deserved a little more concern from her than she'd been exhibiting since her arrival. But she didn't want to appear _too_ involved too quickly. So she awkwardly hovered at the edge of the crowd with her arms folded across her chest and stared mindlessly at the small orchestra.

"Granger?" she heard him finally say.

She turned slowly and feigning a sort of… inquisitive surprise, walked towards him. He looked so very very tired.

"I was beginning to think you would never show up," he said, setting his drink down on the counter.

She shrugged and took the stool beside him. No need reciprocating his sarcasm. She supposed that on some level, she deserved it.

"Well, here I am," she said very coolly, then turned towards the bartender, "Just water, please."

Draco looked at his drink, smiling, and boyishly bounced the glass on the counter.

"Not drinking tonight?" he asked.

She shook her head, "Morgan and I had some wine before coming down." Then, rethinking her remark, she quickly corrected herself. "And now he might be just drunk enough to ask Glennis from Magical Creatures to dinner."

He laughed, a genuine gut-wrenching laugh that split the crow's feet at his eyes.

"Glennis? Dragon-wrangling Glennis with the goggles and sherpa hat?" he asked, smiling at her.

Merlin, Draco made the woman sound like Sasquatch. Hermione choked down a smile and thinking her morsel of information could somehow preserve Glennis' sanctity, corrected Draco with a, "Well… sometimes she wears the dragonhide rugby cap."

Glennis was a good woman. Really. But God, that wasn't enough to keep Hermione from keeling over in laughter when she caught sight of Draco trying to prevent his own laughter by furiously chugging his drink.

Why had she thought it would have made Glennis look better by bringing up the rugby cap? She didn't know, but it had turned out much more amusing than she'd intended, and for the first time in a _long time_, she had said something to Draco without really concerning herself with its repercussions.

She found herself slipping into lazy solace with him.

"Don't tell me you haven't felt the chemistry between them?" she quipped.

Draco shook his head, "Ah—I'm afraid I must have confused it for Glennis' wonderfully natural _musk_."

Again, Hermione felt her gut twisting and her face contorting and before she knew it, she was laughing again, and Draco was laughing with her.

This was okay. Everything was okay.

When their laughter died, she angled her body towards him. He had turned his attention back to his drink that was now almost empty, swirling it about in the glass as if that would make it slide down any easier. She'd never really let herself acknowledge this, but Draco always appeared so incredibly pained. When not engaged in conversations with other people, he slipped into withering silences. She'd noticed this over breakfast, then lunch, and now at dinner.

He really had been broken.

She calmly noted, "You look tired, Draco."

His face grew serious.

"I am," he bluntly replied, "I haven't been sleeping very well."

His openness surprised her. She wondered if nightmares of Adolphus had been keeping him awake. She considered reaching out and touching his knee in that affectionate way that friends do, but thought better of it. They were still immersed in gray pulp. She didn't know what to label this. She could only manage an "oh" in response, not sure what kind of remark would be most appropriate. But, despite her confusion, instead of steering the conversation away from his personal problems, as normal people would have done to spare themselves the discomfiture, Hermione yielded to her curiosity (as she had recently begun showing qualities of being very _unnormal_ in her own frame of reference) because she was certain that philosophical and delicate conversations such as these were a rarity with Malfoys.

"What keeps you up at night?" she asked.

He quickly glanced up at her and without the least hesitation, replied, "The past."

Without thinking, Hermione uttered, "Adolphus?"

As soon as she realized she'd spoken aloud, she sucked in a breath of air. He jerked her head to the side to look at her, his brow knit in concern.

"What?"

Was she not supposed to know these things? She began racking her head for a plausible lie, wondering if Morgan's warning had been more serious than she'd taken it to be, praying she had not just lost Morgan his job by blurting nonsensical musings out without the slightest amount of concern.

But then she remembered that this was Draco, and as much as she found herself enjoying his company, she was not under any obligation to impress or comfort him. After all of her commiseration, he was still Draco and she was still Hermione.

"I asked Morgan about it," she finally said.

The urgency in his face slipped away.

"Oh, I suppose I should have expected as much," he replied.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You two seem close," he shrugged.

She nearly spewed water across the counter.

Draco had just violated several of the unwritten rules of their pathetically fickle relationship—firstly, it was hardly any of his business whether she and Morgan were _anything_ resembling what he had just assumed and secondly, even if they were, good God didn't he have any conversation etiquette? She'd mentioned less than ten minutes ago that Morgan was currently on the market, and though Glennis wasn't exactly the most fetching of mates, the implication had been that Morgan and her were very much unattached. This conversation was so very Hogwarts-esque. _This_ was the type of business that had kept her up for nights with Ginny, giggling madly while they etched stupid things like "Ginny + Harry 4Ever" and "Mione Loves Krum" into their headboards.

"We're just friends," she groaned.

"I didn't say you two weren't," he smirked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the bar.

The two slipped into an easy silence.

"Draco," Hermione said, her curiosity still unfed. It was undoubtedly the wine she'd shared with Morgan earlier that was giving her the reckless courage to ask a man she'd once thought she'd hated for answers she did not intend on using against him.

"Mhm?" he mumbled as he fidgeted about with his coaster on the bar counter.

"If you don't mind me asking… what was Adolphus looking for?"

Other less vindictive people might have regretted asking a question like this, but Hermione had already come to the realization that she had nothing to lose. Maybe he would stop looking at her all the time across the dining table, making her body temperature rise and fall so rapidly, making her feel so goddamn impatient all the time.

Fortunately, Draco wasn't offended. He didn't remark on her nosiness, or throw his drink across the bar in insult, or leave her alone at the bar, which she realized, as he turned to look at her, would have hurt the most.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked.

It was mainly curiosity, but curiosity wasn't really a viable reason for anything these days. She wondered if she was seeing things when she looked across the counter at his hands, restlessly spinning the coaster. They were shaking with such trepidation that she felt the slightest mingling of guilt and sympathy in her gut. In a tentatively slow crawl, Hermione took the coaster and flattened it on the counter, then rested a hand atop his own, her brow raised in a way that acknowledged—I would have been scared, too.

When he said nothing in protest of this interaction, she opened her mouth to respond, "To know if it was worth it."

Draco shook his head. They sat in silence as he mulled this over.

"It was certainly worth the try," he concluded.

She didn't know how to feel about the ease with which he recanted his own torture. So she said nothing and slowly pulled her hand away from his and settled it into her lap. Draco appeared unfazed by this, and continued.

"Adolphus did what men caught in the most extreme throes of his position do," he paused as he dropped off into thought, then coolly finished, "He was looking for one last requiem for Bellatrix."

Hermione's brow furrowed.

Molly had killed Bellatrix, not Draco. Why would Adolphus concern himself with the affairs of Malfoys, especially now that Narcissa and Lucius were dead, when the entire Weasley family was wrapped up in the Ministry's machinery? There was a forty-three percent chance that, just by randomly smashing the elevator's buttons, one could find a Weasley working on any given day. A fifty-seven percent chance on those days that Charlie came by to speak to officials from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures as the representative for the Dragon Keepers Union of Romania.

Why did Adolphus target Draco when, in her most guilt-ridden of revelations, the Weasleys were so much more _accessible_? Draco must have done something decidedly generous that day.

Despite the countless amount of half-assed theories and assumptions that had been drawn up about him, Draco would presumably keep quiet on the subject for quite some while as every man is assured _some_ level of privacy, and certain demons once released cannot be quelled. So she let him drink in silence while a slow waltz wafted in between them.

It was getting late and the courtyard was beginning to empty. Just as Draco turned towards her with his glass raised, a man from Draco's department cut in between them with a manila folder in one arm and a roll of parchment in the other.

"There are some things I wanted to double-check with you on the presentation…" he began as Draco slowly turned his attention towards him.

She smiled and raised her glass to him anyways.

Apparently, their time was up.

As she slipped off the stool, she felt a tug on her sleeve. Before she even turned to look, she knew that it was Draco on the other end. Not necessarily because she felt any sort of _tension_. Mostly because, based on her calculations, there had only been two people at the bar; Draco, and his tubby co-worker with the horn-rimmed glasses, and Hermione was fairly certain that if the fat man had touched her, she would have walloped him across the face for sexual harassment.

Self-admittedly, she'd felt _some_ tension.

Whatever it was, she knew it was Draco tugging her sleeve before she turned, so when she finally _did_ turn, in that bone-creaking muscle-stretching slow-as-shit way, she made sure she was smiling. Smiling at him as though they were friends. As if they did this sort of thing—this talking sort of thing—on the regular.

And when he met her gaze, he sort of hiccupped with his words, apparently as caught off guard by her sincerity as she was by his.

"Good night, Granger," he said.

If the fat man had not been there, and if Hermione had drank any more alcohol, she might have said something along these lines: _Try to sleep well, Draco. Hopefully you'll dream of something other than Adolphus staring down at you while he cruciates your brains out. I am glad we are kind of friends now._

But instead, she nodded and replied calmly, "You too."

Then, hearing Morgan calling her name, she turned and left the bar.

xXx

* * *

Depending on how you interpreted Draco's parting words, Hermione's night was either incredibly good or incredibly bad.

She dreamt again of Draco, of him pacing across her balcony with his shadow pasted across the spilled moonlight. She dreamt of walking through those stubborn French doors, of seeing him leaning across the railing and staring sadly into the reflecting pool. She dreamt of seeing an indescribable despondency in his eyes, and for an instant, thought this was real.

When she sat up in bed and realized that the French doors were still locked and the moon covered by clouds so that hardly any light fell across the carpet, she realized that it had all been in her head.

So, only because Hermione had gotten by for so many years imagining Draco to be a horrible man, she thought to herself that this dream must have been a nightmare and was resigned to tell Morgan, if he asked, that her night had been particularly bad.

But Draco was not actually this horrible. And she _knew_ this now. She considered herself lucky if she was not kept up by visions of Adolphus Lestrange torturing her until her limbs gave out.

So, more importantly, she resigned to tell Draco, if he asked, that her night had been particularly good.

* * *

Author's Note: I never know what to say in these things, other than—I hope you are enjoying it so far. After charting the story all out, it is going to be quite a haul, but I'm definitely planning on finishing it before the end of August. Hopefully I'll have the next part posted in the coming week. This shouldn't really be more than five parts, but if I get really attached to it, it might go a little over. Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed the first chapter. I know how annoying it must be to only have one part of a story up, but I hope the second part gives the story a lot more uh… meat? Also, if any of you have read This and Here, you'll probably recognize the Hermaphrodite reference. GOD I love that joke.

Any ways, keep reading, I love and thank you and appreciate the reviews!


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